


snippets

by witchlamb



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2017-10-28
Packaged: 2019-01-25 08:15:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12526972
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/witchlamb/pseuds/witchlamb
Summary: Random bits of writing that don't deserve their own works but that I want to keep. Tagging fandom only, not character/pairing because... woof. But as an FYI my canon is male mage Lavellan as Inquisitor, romanced Iron Bull, with a smattering of other non-Inquisitor OCs romancing various others.





	snippets

Lavellan hears him muttering under his breath and is slow to approach. He makes his steps obvious, pressing hard against the earth beneath his feet, when normally he is silent in movement, so that Leith can hear him coming -- but still he is not certain he can hear anything. 

"Lethallin," he says, keeping his distance. 

The garden in Skyhold is too often suffused with the faithful, though Lavellan had made pains to make it a place where anyone would feel comfortable. It's late enough that most are asleep. He comes here sometimes to check on the herb garden, to talk to them and help them grow a little bit with the magic his Keeper taught him, and prefers to be alone in the process. He sees he's not the only one with that idea, but the Dalish curled into a tight ball squeezed underneath the gazebo is clearly finding no peace here. 

He had found Leith in the alienage of Val Royeaux, hiding in the catacombs beneath the city during the day and emerging at night to steal half-eaten food from wastebins and hunt rats, talking to himself. The elves of Val Royeaux thought themselves haunted, but it was just a man. A Dalish man, because he had been old enough to have his vallaslin before he had been taken from his clan, though when Lavellan had asked he had refused to say what had happened to them. Had only said he was from "the tower," which he took to mean the White Spire, before the rebellion. 

The templars had done enough to him. Obviously. He wasn't going to pry. 

He crouches far enough away that Leith can still run if he needs to. "Are you all right? Are you hurt?" The other elf shakes his head, but Lavellan can see the glimmer of tears on his face. "Is it very loud?" He nods. 

Leith hears voices. The Chantry calls them demons. Lavellan is not so sure; the Dalish don't believe in a clean delineation from spirit to demon, one being of benevolence and virtue and one of malevolence neatly correlating to certain sins, but rather that they are individuals like any other, and have a range of motivations. He's not even sure the voices Leith hears come from any source. The Chantry thinks anyone who acts differently is possessed by a demon, but the Dalish know the mind gets sick like the body can get sick. 

Leith doesn't remember how to take care of himself. Lavellan's mother had a similar illness. His hair is a ratty mess. Lavellan sits, knees before him. "Is it all right if I touch you?" He waits, very patiently, for the long minute where nothing happens, and then Leith nods. He scoots a little closer, sitting next to him squeezed into the same tight fit as him, and puts his arm around his shoulder. 

"It's all right," he says. "You're going to be okay. We're going to protect you. They won't hurt you anymore." He runs his hand up and down the other elf's arm until the shaking begins to subside. He wonders how long it's been since anyone touched him rather than just hit him. 

"Come, lethallin. Let's brush your hair." 

* * *

He approaches Bull with confidence because of course Bull knows he's there, regardless of how quiet his footsteps are. The man has an uncanny spatial awareness. 

He's bent over the battlements, looking down over the mountains surrounding Skyhold. Lavellan has to stand on his tiptoes to throw the blanket he brought over his shoulders. Bull insists he doesn't feel the cold, refuses to wear a shirt, but he's from Par Vollen and Lavellan, being about nipple-high to Bull, is in constant danger of having an eyeball poked out. Bull grunts, but he's given up arguing that he's so not cold, and shifts his weight uncomfortably. 

"Your leg?" Lavellan asks. Bull wears a brace most days. It hasn't escaped his notice how it still pains him. 

Bull rolls his shoulders and exhales a heavy sigh. "Yeeeeeep." 

"Want me to help?" 

Bull chuckles, reaches out and ruffles his hair, which he knows Lavellan hate-loves. "Nah. I'd just get used to it and then what would I do without you?" 

"Probably, you know, attempt to be all manly all by yourself and brood and then expire dramatically and fall off the battlements to your messy death." 

"Hey, now... that's getting a little specific, there. Thought about it, have you?" 

Lavellan leans all the way over and nudges his side with his shoulder. "You know I worry about you." 

He is lifted all the way off his feet so fast and so hard that his breath escapes his lungs in a high squeak, and he's pulled so tightly to Bull's chest in the tightest bear hug he's ever experienced. His feet dangle inches off the ground, face squashed against his chest. The blanket drapes over the two of them, dangling from Bull's horns. Lavellan makes a show of resisting -- squirming, kicking his feet -- until Bull shakes him and he settles down -- little ways like that where he submits to him. 

"Yeah, kadan. I know." 

* * *

"You can't possibly tell me that you read every book in our actual library." 

Dorian snorts at his most undignified, elbow-deep in a tome so dusty that it's left a film over his hands and -- Lavellan is tickled to notice -- in his moustache. He pretends not to notice. "Well, not for lack of trying," he says, turning a page without looking up. Lavellan leans against a creaky old bookcase. 

"What are you escaping from? No -- don't tell me. New Chantry initiates?" 

"Yes, I grew weary of having them fall adoringly at my feet. Who knew I'd be such a hit with the naive cloistered adolescent girl crowd?" 

"Oh. No adolescent girls? What about grown men who look like adolescent girls?" He glances behind him, towards the exit, and gestures with his thumb. "You want I should leave?" 

Dorian gives him a Look, but there's a smirk somewhere under all that moustache. "No, you stay. Please, do torture me some more." 

"Since you asked, I'll have Bull lend me his floggers next time." 

Dorian shudders dramatically, barely holding in a laugh. "Please. Oh, Maker, please don't clue me in on whatever is going on in your enormously weird sex life. I really, truly don't need to know." 

"Ah... so now I've got ammunition for if you ever misbehave. Excellent. I'll keep that in mind." He crosses the distance between them and hops up on the lone desk down here, knowing he's going to leave an imprint of his butt, and is going to walk away looking like he pressed his arse in the powdered sugar at an expensive Royan bakery. "Is everything all right?" 

Dorian waves him off. "Fine, it's fine. Just peachy. I just --" He pauses, his mouth in a thin line. "It's much quieter down here. One can actually hear the sound of one's own thoughts." 

Dorian says he doesn't care what anyone thinks about him, but Lavellan knows that is not the case. He'll have to ask Josephine what people are saying. In the meantime he leans all the way over to peer at his book until he's obstructing Dorian's view of it, and enjoys the huff of protest. "What is it you're reading?" 

"You really want to partake in 'A History of Linear Systems and Signals In Leylines'?" 

"Oh. Yes, absolutely." 

"It's unabridged, Inquisitor." 

"Ooh, much better than the bridged." He bats his eyelashes at him until Dorian sighs. "No, I'm serious. I don't read Common very well." Dorian glances up at him, eyebrows into his hairline, and Lavellan shrugs. "Well, we don't keep books that aren't relevant to our history. Artifacts and the like. And those are all in Elvish. No one in the clan has to read Common." 

Something in Dorian's face softens with understanding. He's not the first to have not considered that a Dalish elf might not be literate. "Well, in that case, I'll need to teach you how to put into writing that this is your idea when they inevitably find your corpse down here, having been bored to actual death." 

Lavellan puts his hand over his heart. "I promise, friend, to let them all know I hoisted myself by my own petard." 

And Dorian laughs, turning back to the beginning of the chapter, the tension gone in his shoulders. 

* * *

He came to the war room looking for a report he must have left behind and finds Cassandra staring at the map, scrutinizing or brooding, one or the other. Hard to tell with her, she's got one of those faces where she usually looks displeased. He gives her a wide berth just in case as he grabs the document he'd come for, but he can't just... leave her there, knowing what she's like -- that she'll stay here for hours killing herself over things she couldn't have prevented or helped -- so he speaks up. 

"You know if you keep glaring at them like that they're going to spontaneously become sentient just so they can flee in terror." 

He doesn't have to see her face to know she's rolling her eyes. "I am not glaring," she says. "I am studying." 

"Well, you're doing it very intensely." He crosses the distance between them so he can stand on the other side of the table, eyes sweeping over what she says she's studying. The markers around Caer Oswin have already been cleared but for a single piece repersenting the Inquisition. She's thinking about it again, he can tell. 

"Cassandra, you're too hard on yourself." 

She snorts, her eyes still on the map tokens before her. "You've said that before." 

"Well, it's still true, so apparently I'm meant to keep saying it. And you can stand here all night and kill yourself with what-I-could-have-dones and it's not going to change anything. You've already accomplished so much." He puts his hand next to hers -- not quite touching her because he knows she doesn't really like it. "We're proud of you. We all think you're incredible." 

He can hear her inhale deeply and slowly let it out, her shoulders set in a line as straight as a brick wall. She says nothing, but she won't look at him, either, so he's sure that she heard him. 

"You want to go get an ale and complain about annoying people?" 

He is gratified to see that she actually cracks a smile for a record of two seconds. "Well, when you put it like that..."


End file.
